Why do children misbehave?

I’m working with a mom right now who is ready to resign from motherhood.  Her 5 year old son won’t do anything he’s told and is constantly getting into trouble. 

I know Mom would like a quick fix from me but I’ve emphasized to her that we need to try and get to the root cause of his behavior.  Children misbehave for a reason.  Very often it’s simply to get our attention.  Sometimes it’s because they want control and power.  There are children who will act out of revenge.  If they’re been hurt they want to hurt back. 

My suggestion to my client was to set up a chart with a few simple tasks that will earn him stickers.  I’m not an advocate of charts for the most part but sometimes I recommend them as a way to shift the focus from negative behavior to positive behavior.  It helps sometimes to put a system in place that forces us to acknowledge the things our kids are doing right.  When we have a child who misbehaves a lot, they start to label themselves as “bad” and act accordingly.  They also know for sure they’ll get noticed if they do something wrong.  We also get into a pattern of waiting for the next misdemeanor.

There are times as well that our kids are simply acting out to test us.  They’re not clear what the boundaries are so they deliberately see how far they can go.  It reminds us that we need to be consistent and be comfortable with saying “no” when we have to.  Some children are very skilled manipulators.  They’re so good at it, we often don’t even realize we’ve been manipulated.  We find ourselves getting hooked when we hear things like:  “You never buy me anything” or ”You never let me go out” or “That’s not fair!” 

Once we’ve discovered the cause of misbehavior and we can attend to the cause, we usually see positive changes.